Cobblers boss Page straight down to work as he finalises retained list

Jeremy Casey

Cobblers boss Rob Page may have only been through the doors at Sixfields for a matter of hours, but he is getting straight down to work with his first task sorting out the club’s retained list.

Page was unveiled as the new Cobblers boss on Thursday afternoon, just a week after Chris Wilder quit the club to take the top job at Sheffield United, and he revealed he has immediate work to do in deciding on the futures of certain players at Sixfields.

Josh Lelan

There are a handful of Cobblers players whose deals run out this summer.

Danny Rose, Josh Lelan and Paul Corry are all out of contract at the end of June, while the deals of Chris Hackett and Evan Horwood, who have been out on loan at Barnet and Grimsby Town respectively since January, also expire.

The rest of the squad is under contract for at least one more season, and Page is keen to get to work on ensuring his his squad is ready for action ahead of pre-season.

“Myself and the chairman will sit down, probably this evening, because we want to get on with our work straight away,” said Page.

Paul Corry

“We want to look at what we have got, and make decisions from there.

“It would be unfair to talk about individuals at this moment in time, we want to sit down and look at what we have, do the retained list, and I like to deal with it on a personal basis.”

One minor irritation for Page may be that he is not going to be able to get the squad together ahead of pre-season, as many of the players are already off on their summer holidays.

Asked if that is a frustration for him, Page said: “It is a little bit, but I pretty much know the group anyway, and I am looking forward to the first day of pre-season already.

Danny Rose

“The players won’t appreciate me saying that, but it is an exciting time and one when I am really looking forward to introducing myself to the them.”

Chairman Kelvin Thomas is also keen to finalise the retained list and start work on any restructuring of the playing staff, and he said: “We will be talking about it tonight and taking that conversation a bit further.

“Rob will have some ideas on players he wants to bring in, and we have a recruitment team that will look at that anyway, so we will be getting on with that and trying to get it sorted.

“But we are lucky we have a very good group of players that isn’t going to need a lot of chopping and changing, so we are in decent shape with all that.”